How the Snapchat API is Impacting the Advertising World

Snapchat recently opened up its long-awaited API to creative agencies and ad tech companies. Players in the ad industry are already jumping on the bandwagon and these early birds are getting plenty of attention, writes Lauren Johnson over at Adweek.

Vayner Media is one of those early birds, running early campaigns with the API for USA Networks and Nordstrom. CEO Gary Vanyerchuck claims its recent foray with the API attracts enquiries from other curious companies 25 to 50 times a day. Vanyerchuck claims the Snapchat API offers a completely new way to put creative content between people’s stories.

The Snapchat API, like email and Web marketing campaigns, lets you run A/B testing on creative campaigns. You can tweak content and target ads based on demographic data like age, gender, location and device in real-time. VaynerMedia is building its own technology integrating the API to provide detailed analytics on the ads’ performance.

Even better, Snapchat’s software allows brands to hone in on similar audiences and pair up data its own data on file like email addresses and device IDs with Snapchat’s data while keeping everything anonymous.

VaynerMedia client Nordstrom is happy with their campaign’s results so far and plans to use the Snapchat API more. "We've been excited by how our customers have responded to the Ivy Park content we launched through Snap Ads API content so far and we're looking forward to connecting with them through new versions in the future," said a company spokesperson. With the attention VaynerMedia is getting, it seems like a lot of other major brands will be doing the same soon.